[GTALUG] Dan Gilmore on computing freedom

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| https://medium.com/backchannel/why-i-m-saying-goodbye-to-apple-google-and-microsoft-78af12071bd

Interesting.  I think that he's half right about a lot of stuff.

Apple was NEVER a good guy with respect to freedom.  Except
accidentally.  For example, the computers after the Apple II were much
more locked down.

An underdog often looks like a Good Guy.  It would have little power
to impose its will on its customers.  It would have great incentive to
produce as much value in its product as it could so that it can
improve market share.  If the underdog ever becomes overdog, beware.

For me, Linux has been pretty usable on notebooks for quite some
time (20 years).  For Gilmor, the required tools were probably not
there initially, but perhaps more important was the impression of
inadequacy.  Barriers that might have mattered:

- careful picking of notebook to not get stuck with unsupported
  devices (gotten much better)

- residual configuration not done by vendor.  One good step was
  getting a reasonable defaulting in Xorg so that xorg.conf was
  generally not needed.

- Open Office getting "good enough".  Very subjective.  In fact
  it may well not be the best choice for ones actual task but
  it falls naturally to hand due to MS Office's mind share.

- games

- Adobe Flash (Apple has almost killed it!  Yay!)

- proprietary software (eg Tax software)

The big privacy battles are now internet-related.  Many are beyond our
reasonable control.  I can't imagine giving up internet search (I use
Duck Duck Go but I don't think that eliminates the problem).  The vast
majority of the internet is bought and paid for by privacy-destroying
marketing.